


Let be these poppies, not for you

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthur-centric, Breakfast, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, Father-Son Relationship, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Gardens & Gardening, Good Morgana (Merlin), Hopeful Ending, Horses, Major Character Injury, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Mutual Pining, POV Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), POV Third Person, Pining Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Poetry, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-World War I, Repression, Roses, Sibling Love, Soldier Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Some Humor, Swearing, Wine, why is there no tag for Pendragon Family Mess™?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: Inspired by lady_ragnell's "While Ye May," this imagines a possible future for the Arthur and Merlin of that story. The title is taken from Christina Rossetti's "The Prince's Progress," excerpted inThe Oxford Book of English Verse, commonly carried by English soldiers in the First World War. After the war, Arthur returns to his ancestral home, to his father, to his sister, to a library where he only reads one book, and to a garden without a gardener.
Relationships: Arthur Pendragon & Uther Pendragon (Merlin), Gwaine & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Gwen/Lancelot (Merlin), Leon & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Morgana & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Morgana & Uther Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 68





	1. August

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [While Ye May](https://archiveofourown.org/works/944827) by [lady_ragnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell). 



Arthur sits in the rose garden, and in its riot he sees decay. The air is thick with the roses’ scent; he tells himself that it is unlike the smell of death, despite the layers of fallen blossoms, their cloying sweetness. Arthur shifts restlessly on the bench. He checks to see if he is observed before bending to massage the muscles of his right calf. He takes a deep breath; of course, there is no one there. Of course, he is no longer a captain now. And he is often alone.

In some ways, the homecoming to Dragon Hall has been easier than he expected. He had imagined his father looking at him with wordless disappointment. He had imagined demands, oblique or explicit: _And what will you do now, Arthur?_ At the front and, later, in hospital, he had run through elaborate scenarios of how he would answer questions over the dinner table. _What made you think it was wise to lead the charge without reinforcements? What possessed you to let Percy volunteer for reconnaissance?_ And so on, and on. But their dinners are oddly silent. Arthur wonders, sometimes, if this is his fault. He and his father and Morgana make polite small talk about politics — a miracle in itself — and he and his father sit without speaking over the port, and Arthur wonders if he should be able to find the answer to the question in Uther’s eyes. Discovering what the question is would be a start.

Arthur straightens a little too carefully, and walks slowly back to the house.


	2. September

“Poetry’s bad for you.”

Arthur shuts the book sharply between his palms. “Morgana.” 

His sister pushes off the doorframe of the library and comes into the room. “And brooding’s worse. What _are_ you reading?” He turns the spine for her. Morgana snorts derisively. “ _The Oxford Book of English Verse_? With all that’s in here?”

He does not answer. He knows from years of experience that Morgana does not require an answer. And he does not know how to explain that he has chosen it because it was the only book in another man’s pack.

“So?” Predictably, Morgana prods. “What are you reading?”

“Herrick,” says Arthur tersely. Morgana raises her eyebrows. “‘Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, / Old Time is still a-flying; / And this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying.’”

“Arthur,” says Morgana. He thinks he might be able to bear the pity in her voice, if it were not tempered with understanding. They sit in silence, and the autumn rain beats against the windows. “Women have written poems too, occasionally.”

He chuckles, almost in spite of himself. “Oh, indeed?” He turns to find her eyes dancing, and cannot help but smile. “Let’s have one, then.”

“Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all.”

Arthur swallows. “That’s…”

“What you missed out on by pretending that one goes to school to play rugby,” says Morgana.

“Ah,” says Arthur. “Might have known there was something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can access the book Arthur is reading here: https://archive.org/details/cu31924011997909/mode/2up
> 
> Morgana quotes Emily Dickinson, whose first poetry collection was published in 1890.


	3. October

The weather is bright and windy, and they are playing croquet on the lawn. They have had one of the neighboring families to tea, and this is the sequel. Arthur taps his mallet firmly against the ball, watches it skim across the perfect turf. Inevitably, Vivian applauds. Arthur works his jaw, and does not catch Morgana’s eye. 

He closes his eyes, and breathes. The air is clear and and brisk and perfect. He tells himself that this is enough. He tells himself that it does not matter that he cannot bring himself to rejoin the county hunt. Arthur breathes. He tries not to imagine the expression on his father’s face, behind him. He still does not know what the question is behind Uther’s eyes. But sometimes he thinks his father looks older every day. And he thinks he ought to know how to make it stop. 

“Arthur!” flutes Vivian. His eyes snap open. Morgana is looking murderous; that is not in itself surprising. Vivian is simpering; their balls have come to rest against each other. Arthur strides over to them. Vivian’s protestations — coy, flirtatious — he allows to flow unheeded. He wonders briefly if it should worry him, this capacity to treat a beautiful woman’s patter like the whistle of shells. He braces his bad leg on his own ball, bends his knees, and takes his shot. The mallet strikes like the wrath of God, and Vivian’s ball bounces away towards the box hedge. Arthur looks up. She is golden and elegant and, for the first time, looking at him with a complete lack of pretense, humiliated and furious. Arthur sighs.


	4. November

On the first anniversary of the Armistice, he goes up to London alone. He is relieved that neither Uther nor Morgana questions this. “Meeting a friend at the club,” he tells them. This has the virtue of being true, if it is not all the story. 

He does not go to the Cenotaph. But he stands on the narrow balcony over the portico of the Bellona Club and listens to the silence over London. Somewhere — in a nearby alley, perhaps, leading off of one of the kitchens — a woman is weeping. The two minutes seem very long. 

Arthur tells the porter that he is expecting a friend. He allows himself a first whisky while he is waiting; he tells himself to make it last. In the half hour before the appointment, he checks his watch too often. He is glad that, in the months since the war, he has not stopped wearing it on his wrist. He is not sure, in the end, what makes him look round to find a slight commotion at the door, the porter hovering uncertainly.

“Leon!” says Arthur, too loudly, and goes to meet him. “My god, it is good to see you.” He wonders, the next moment, if it is a tactless thing to say, but Leon beams and wrings him warmly by the hand. 

“And you. Seems an age.”

“A lifetime. Bar all right?”

Leon nods. Arthur wonders if he has gotten used to ignoring the whispers, the barely concealed stares. Arthur makes a quick, imperious gesture, and two whiskies appear on the bar. “Good of you,” says Leon.

“Not at all.” Arthur exhales. He understands, suddenly, what the expression means: _it does my heart good to see you._ He feels as though he is easier in his own skin. “I’m glad to see you came out all right.” 

“Yes, well…” He hitches one shoulder in a shrug. “Here’s luck.”

Arthur chinks their glasses together, noticing that Leon holds his motionless. “I didn’t mean…”

“Oh, it’s all right,” says Leon, a shade too quickly; Arthur wonders if he is used to offering the reassurance. “One eye is enough for most things, really.” Arthur finds he cannot join in the other man’s wry laughter.

“Still,” he says. “I go without the stick, most days, and still find I resent being a barometer.”

“Fair enough.” Leon’s expression relaxes into something more thoughtful, more genuine. “I suppose,” he says, “that I’d mind more if it weren’t for Nancy.”

“Nancy?”

“My wife.” 

Arthur keeps his jaw from dropping; he hopes that he keeps the astonishment from his face. He looks at the drawn and shining scars, the clouded eye, and he hopes that the men who worried about such things ( _What if she won’t have me? What if she minds?_ ) found women like Nancy. “Childhood sweetheart?” asks Arthur lightly, though he wonders, in that case, why it should have been a cousin whose letters came most often.

“No.” Leon blushes, and pulls at his whisky before replying. “My nurse.”

“You sly devil.”

“She didn’t ‘special’ me,” adds Leon, as if in excuse. “But she… she was kind. We’d walk up and down the wards; once I was on my feet again properly, she’d come early or stay late, and we’d walk in the gardens. She’d keep on my left side,” adds Leon. “You know how it was, always having to be alert, always knowing what was going on around you.”

“Yes.”

“I kept _worrying_ ,” says Leon with a sigh. Arthur notices that, even here, he does not say _I was afraid._ “So she stayed on my bad side, so that I’d know what was there.” Leon smiles. “And one day, I got up the courage to ask her never to leave it.”

Arthur finds himself unexpectedly moved; he signals for another round of whiskies. “I’m glad for you,” he says, and hopes Leon knows how much he means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nancy got her name from _Parade's End_ ; the Bellona Club belongs to Dorothy L. Sayers. Leon deserves good things and more narrative attention, I feel.


	5. December

In mid-December, Uther has the port changed. The nose is surprising, but Arthur says nothing, not until he has tasted it. He waits for Gaius to melt tactfully away, and then he says:

“Quite excellent, this.” 

Uther smiles. It is always, somehow, a surprising expression on his face. “ ’89 tawny,” he says softly.

Arthur raises his eyebrows. He wishes that he did not reflexively wonder what his father wanted, what gambit or demand for which this might constitute the prelude. He takes another sip of the port, sets the glass very deliberately down. The fire seems loud in the grate. “What did you want to speak to me about, Father?”

A muscle in Uther’s cheek twitches. “I wanted… to ask you what your thoughts were about planning for Christmas. With rationing, things may be difficult, but we could slaughter one of the hogs.”

Arthur feels as though he is missing something. “Yes,” he says slowly, “we could. Gaius can oversee the distribution of the extra meat. If you think we have to invite Father Geoffrey, by all means, but I think it would be nice to be just the three of us.”

Uther seems to consider this like a political strategy. “Yes,” he agrees, “it would. And I would be spared his disquisitions on history.”

Arthur is startled into laughter; he turns it into a cough, and raises the port to his lips. Setting it down again, he decides to take his life in his hands. “See here, Father: what did you really want to talk to me about? Surely a discussion of the effects of rationing on Christmas dinner does not require a thirty-year vintage. We could have had it out with Morgana over breakfast. She would have been rude about Father Geoffrey, and you would have scolded her for it, but still.”

Uther does not answer immediately. He stares at his own reflection in the table’s mahogany surface for long enough that Arthur begins to think that he will not answer at all. “I wanted,” says Uther at last, “to hear your voice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I think that the show's Uther, in this or any 'verse, would be capable of articulating his own emotions or talking about those of others? No. Do I think he deserves to be a three-dimensional character? Yes.


	6. January

The weather is too foul either to walk or to ride. So Arthur has nothing to do but brood. He does this in the library, where he can always, at least, pretend to be absorbed in a book. This lasts for five days before Morgana storms in in the middle of the afternoon.

“Tell me.” Arthur, standing by the window, drops his book. “Sorry,” she says, and he is surprised by her sincerity. “I’m sorry, Arthur; I didn’t mean to startle you.” He wonders what his face looks like, and tries to school it. “I just wanted…” She picks up _The Oxford Book of English Verse_ from the floor, smooths the worn gold lettering on its dark blue spine. “I just thought you might want to talk about it.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “You thought that _I_ might want to _talk_ about ‘it.’ Whatever ‘it’ is.” He regrets his brutality when she looks up; he can see that she is close to tears.

“Yes, Arthur, I did.” Her chin is squared, and it comes to him with a jolt how much he loves her, this fearless girl who has always come into places where she is unwelcome and made them her own. “And I think that, even if you don’t, it might do you good.”

Arthur waves her to the leather sofa; he knows it is a capitulation. Heavily he sits down next to her. And he finds that he has no idea what to say. 

After a few moments, Morgana slips her hand into his. “What are you reading today?” she asks softly. 

“Dunbar.” Arthur swallows. “‘Our pleasance here is all vain glory, / This fals world is but transitory, / The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee: / _Timor Mortis conturbat me.’_ ” 

Morgana squeezes his hand. They don’t talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Arthur quotes from is this one, which has also been linked to the Arthurian legend by T.H. White:  https://poets.org/poem/lament-makaris The stanza he gives might be loosely translated as "All our pleasures here are vain; the world is deceitful and fleeting; our flesh is weak, and the Devil is sly, and I am troubled by the fear of death."
> 
> Upcoming chapters will be a bit longer than these; written and edited, they will be posted on a daily schedule in the upcoming week.


	7. February

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> N.B. This chapter contains references to the fates of several of Arthur's men. These are based on their fates in the show's canon, and updated for the AU. The descriptions are not graphic, but they are true to WWI experiences; proceed with this knowledge.
> 
> A "Blighty," mentioned by Arthur, was any wound severe enough to warrant a soldier's being sent home to England for treatment, rather than to a field hospital behind the lines.

Morgana comes to find him in the library again. “We’re going riding.”

“And you’ve decided this, have you?”

“I’ve had George saddle Llamrei.”

Arthur sighs. “Give me a quarter of an hour.”

Morgana takes them out into the lanes. Arthur finds it impossible to resent her, with Llamrei eager and responsive under him. They salute the villagers, and move at an easy trot until they are out into the hills. They race each other over the turf as they did as children, breathless and exultant, and dare each other to leap hedges, and Arthur almost feels free.

“We should go back,” he says, eventually and too soon. The dusk is already drawing in. “Be home in time for tea,” he adds, reminding himself that this will be a good thing.

“We can toast crumpets by the fire,” says Morgana.

“Yes.” 

They have reached the ruined abbey two miles from the hall when Morgana pulls up short. “Tell me.”

“What?”

“Arthur, please. Please, for me.” He stares at her in dismay. She is beautiful and immaculate, perfectly in control of her mount, and her eyes are wide and wounded and shining. “Please,” says Morgana again. “I won’t tell Father.”

It is this that strikes the closest — that she thinks he might fear her betrayal. “No,” says Arthur quickly, inarticulately. “No, it’s not that.”

“Then…”

Arthur sighs, and gives in to the inevitable, and dismounts. Morgana follows suit, but does not step closer. This, he thinks, is who she is, and this is why he loves her: she wants closeness, but will not press for it as for an advantage.

“I left them,” he says. He hears her intake of breath; she does not protest. “Not intentionally, of course, but that is what it amounts to. I led them into _that_ and then… After I was invalided out, there was a Cornishman, and he didn’t understand.” Arthur takes a deep breath, and lets it out. “This isn’t about the Cornishman. Leon… he was the friend I went up to meet in London. True as steel. He was…” Arthur chuckles bitterly. “He was the sort of man they make propaganda posters about. Duty and king and country. Too serious to have a girl back home. His cousin sent him letters, letters about the kind of life he should have had. He was burned, and badly; he lost the sight of an eye.

“Lancelot,” says Arthur, deliberately pressing on, not looking at Morgana, not looking at anything except the crumbling ruins of a place where men thought they had found security. “Lancelot had a girl.” Arthur swallows. “Gwen, her name was, and she had a smile like sunshine. God help us, I think we were all a little in love with her. Lancelot got letters with every post that came through. Blown to bits,” says Arthur, because he is determined to tell the worst. “Not even a body, not even her own photo to send back to her.” He finds he is shaking, and drops to his knees.

“They should have had a future,” he gasps; “they should have had children.”

“Shh,” says Morgana, reaching out for him, and they might be again in the nursery, with her consoling him for a bad dream.

“Gwaine,” manages Arthur. It would be harder to keep silence, now.

“Tell me about Gwaine.”

“Irish, irreverent, irrepressible. Probably get himself arrested for treason, back home; it was a running joke. I thought I’d have to stand witness at his trial, one of these days, or post bail for him. He always said I’d have to buy him a drink. When it was over,” says Arthur. “That’s what we always said. ‘When all this is over…’”

Morgana rocks him against her shoulder for several moments before saying: “What happened?”

“Got his Blighty a little before I had mine.” Arthur licks his lips. “I went to find him. Went to offer him a drink. I did buy him a drink, in fact.”

“Did he blame you?” Morgana asks the question very quietly.

Arthur chokes out what he thinks might pass for laughter. “He didn’t recognize me.”

“Oh, _Arthur_.”

“Yes.”

They are silent for some time. The first thing Arthur realizes is that his knees are stiff and cold against the February earth. Then he realizes that Morgana has pressed her lips to his temple. Then he realizes that he has been crying.

“Come on,” says Morgana, “let’s go home.”


	8. March

They go riding more often as the days grow milder. They do not speak of the war again; nor, by tacit mutual consent, do they again ride up to the abbey. This changes on a windy, radiant morning when the daffodils are tossing and preening as if demanding the beholder take Wordsworthian delight in them. 

Having made his decision, Arthur is determined not to give himself time to relent. He takes them over the last few furlongs and up the rise at a brisk canter, and Morgana is slightly breathless behind him when he pulls up.

“Emerson,” says Arthur, without turning in his saddle. Morgana brings her gelding up next to him. “Private Emerson,” he says. “Merlin.” Morgana does not speak, for which he is grateful; she waits, her reins held lightly in one hand.

“He was my batman,” says Arthur, “eventually. But even before that, he was… He seemed to be always _there_ , somehow. Even and perhaps especially when he shouldn’t have been. He’d offer a cup of tea or quote poetry at me or make some smart remark…”

Once, he had found Arthur fiddling with a strap twisted at his shoulder. The offer of help was made easily, and with unwonted respect. Arthur had accepted it as a matter of routine. But the buckle was rusted shut, and as Merlin tugged at it, his breath came warm against Arthur’s ear and throat, his narrow hips pressing forward as he sought for balance on the mud boards, and Arthur had stepped away so abruptly that the other man almost fell. _Thank you, Private_ , he had said, _I’ll manage._ When he had dared to look back, there had been hurt in Merlin’s eyes.

Arthur takes a deep breath. “He kept roses,” he says. “He _bred_ roses. They weren’t wealthy, his family; I don’t know what he did for a living; I only know that he lived with his mother and bred roses. And I have no idea what became of him.” 

“Arthur, _really._ ”

He turns so abruptly in his saddle that Llamrei snorts and tosses her head. “What do you mean, ‘Arthur, really’?”

Morgana laughs; he is too taken aback to be insulted. “Only you, Arthur. Advertise. Ask after him. Someone must know. Call in a favor from someone you know behind a desk in Whitehall.”

“I did ask,” says Arthur sullenly. “Leon didn’t know. I offered him — Merlin — a job after the war,” he adds. “I thought he might tend Mother’s rose garden.”

Morgana looks at him very steadily, and Arthur has the uncomfortable feeling that she is seeing more than he means her to. “Advertise,” she says slowly, “in the _Times_.”

Arthur scoffs. “You think some… some farmer in a village without electricity or the telephone is going to take the _Times_?”

“The point is,” says Morgana, with an air of great patience, “that he knows that you do.”

Though he does not give Morgana the satisfaction of telling her, Arthur advertises in the _Times_. He locks the door of his bedroom before drafting the text. In the end, with half a dozen versions flaming wastefully in the grate, this is what he writes:

_Emerson:_  
_Offer of job still good._  
_Roses untended. —Penn._


	9. April

Arthur waits. The exchange of sections of the newspaper with Uther at breakfast becomes a fraught thing, outwardly still a polite ritual. There is no answering advertisement. No letter comes for him on the silver tray. There is no telegram (though that is less surprising; the nation is wary of telegrams.)

One morning, he comes down still fiddling with a cufflink to find Gaius in dispute on the doorstep. 

“If you’ll just come round to the side door…” Gaius is saying, and Arthur frowns.

“But I’ve been sent for!” comes the answer, the voice echoing clear in the empty hall, and Arthur nearly stumbles over his own feet before pushing the cufflink roughly through and getting down the stairs as fast as he can. He braces his hand on the balustrade; he curses his bad leg.

“I’ve come to see to the roses,” Merlin is saying.

“If you’ve come about a job, you’ll have to…”

“It’s all right, Gaius,” says Arthur. He is slightly out of breath. “It’s all right. I did send for him.”

Then Gaius steps aside, and there is Merlin. He is standing on the topmost step, incongruous in civvies he is too slender for, pack slung over his shoulder, and his smile is blinding. Arthur thinks, dizzily, madly, that he might faint. He is terribly tempted to haul Merlin inside by the fabric of his shirt. Merlin’s smile falters slightly.

“Roses,” manages Arthur, and gets past Gaius and past Merlin — _Merlin_ , who stands in front of a strange house with his worldly goods on his back because Arthur sent for him — and strides out across the gravel yard. “Leave your pack,” he says, and does not look back as he heads past the carriage house and down the drive. He knows Merlin will follow.

He takes four deliberate strides into the garden, and gets his breathing under control before turning around. He is surprised to see no sign of Merlin, but in the time it takes for fear to spark into irritation, he hears a quick, uneven step on the gravel, and then Merlin is in the archway. It takes Arthur another moment to realize that the other man has a hand braced against the brickwork, and that his breath is coming too fast. Arthur takes a step forward, and reminds himself that he was going to keep his distance. 

Merlin smiles; there is a sheen of perspiration in the hollows of his temples, and below the cropped dark hair that is longer than Arthur has ever seen it. “Beautiful,” he says. “Really… splendid." He coughs. "In a shocking state, of course.”

“You’ve been gassed,” says Arthur. It comes out like an accusation. For the second time that morning, he sees Merlin’s joy dislimn into uncertainty.

“Sort of thing that might happen to anyone,” he offers, and Arthur bites down on his lip to keep from swearing. 

“You…” He can manage nothing else.

“Still fit to… tend a rose garden,” says Merlin, faintly, but with an affectionate indignation in his voice that wrings Arthur’s heart with its familiarity. “That is, if you…”

“Yes,” says Arthur, and takes another step forward. “Yes.”

For a moment, Merlin simply looks at him, his breath still coming short, lips slightly parted, and Arthur wonders just what madness beats in his pulse. Then Merlin turns away, and fingers one of the branches that climbs against the wall. “That’s lucky,” he says. “I’ve come just in time for the spring pruning.”


	10. May

Arthur saves the revelation that he has advertised for and hired a gardener for the evening, and the port. Uther goes momentarily still, the decanter arrested in his hand, but then he meets Arthur's eyes, and stammers out: “That’s wonderful.”

Arthur manages not to say: _It is?_ “You really think so?”

“I do,” says Uther. “I do. I’m glad you’re… that is, I…” He clears his throat. “It will be good to have your mother’s garden tended again.”

So Private Emerson becomes Emerson, who looks after the roses. Arthur still thinks of him as Merlin. But after that first, nearly calamitous morning, he keeps his distance. He tells himself that this is undoubtedly the wisest course. It must be enough that Merlin is here, and safe, and losing some of his fragile pallor. It must be enough.

“You should see the rose garden, Arthur,” says Morgana one morning over breakfast. She has not looked up from her letters, and remains impervious to the glare Arthur sends her in response. “Emerson’s done wonders with it.”

“Has he?” asks Uther, sounding genuinely interested.

“Mm,” says Morgana, smiling into her coffee cup. Arthur kicks her under the table. He fully expects her to respond in kind, expects to feel the once-familiar sensation of the toe of her boot connecting with his shin. Even once he had gone up to university, they had persisted in this childish method of conducting arguments, safely beneath Uther’s notice.

But Morgana does not kick him in the shin. She replaces her cup in its saucer, looks directly at Arthur, and grins, slow and delighted. He has just time for a pang of apprehension before she says sweetly: “What _are_ your views on women’s enfranchisement, Arthur?” Behind his section of the _Times_ , Uther chokes on his toast.

After breakfast, and a conversation that ended up on the subject of the Women’s International League, Arthur goes out to the rose garden. He walks slowly, shoulders back and hands clasped behind him as if he were on inspection. A plume of fragrant smoke rises just outside the back wall; the lopped-off branches of the spring pruning go up in flames as the garden comes into new life. Arthur takes a deep breath, and goes through the gate. 

It takes him some time to locate Emerson. He walks the green paths of the garden as if in a world without landmarks, and finds himself thinking of the miles of mud with their wry signposts: “Piccadilly This Way.” At last, he finds Merlin leaning on a spade by the postern; he is suddenly, incongruously reminded of a painting in his college chapel, of a man with kind eyes seeking to open an overgrown door. Merlin does not raise his head when Arthur approaches. 

“Emerson,” he says sharply. Merlin straightens, then; and is bent over, coughing, the next instant. “Christ God, man,” says Arthur. He crosses to him, takes the spade roughly from his hand, sits him down unceremoniously on his wheelbarrow. He marches over to the spigot in the wall, rinses out a clay dish — needs must — and carries it back to Merlin filled with water. “Come on,” he says. He allows himself to place a hand between the other man’s shoulder blades. “It’s cleaner than what we drank in the trenches.” 

“ ’M fine,” says Merlin, whose fingers do not touch Arthur’s on the dish. 

“Clearly.”

“Just… got a lungful of the smoke,” manages Merlin. “Stupid, really.”

“Christ,” says Arthur feelingly.

“Why, my lord,” says Merlin, breathless and mocking, “are you afraid I won’t be fit for duty?”

Arthur works his jaw. “I…” he says. He steps back before he can do something insane, like snatch the dish and hurl it against the nearest wall, or pull Merlin upright by the front of his smock and kiss the taste of smoke from his mouth. “I wanted to say that… that you’re doing wonders with the garden. We’re all very pleased. I thought you should know.”

Merlin looks up at him, his eyes sapphire-dark and thoughtful. Arthur wonders if, behind the trellised roses, he sees hedges of barbed wire in a land without birdsong. “Thank you, my lord,” says Merlin. Arthur turns on his heel, and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am aware that rose branches would take longer than a month (or even six weeks) to dry out fully; but I am playing with horticultural realism for the sake of the fic's timing.
> 
> Did I derive immoderate glee from writing the sentence "Morgana does not kick him in the shin"? Yes. She's been a very supportive big sister and I feel she deserves some breakfast table backup.


	11. June

The roses are in riot; Morgana has started having them brought into the house. Their fragrance is intoxication and temptation at once. Arthur tries to ignore it. 

“Do you have plans for the summer, Arthur?” asks Uther over breakfast.

“Hmm?” Arthur flattens his hands against the table, wanting to be sure they do not tremble. He breathes deeply, reminds himself that his father has said _for the summer_ , not _for your life_.

“I thought you might want to travel,” says Uther into the _Times_. “Scotland, perhaps, or the Riviera.”

Arthur finds his mouth suddenly dry. “No,” he says. He feels vertiginous panic at the idea of being that far away from Merlin for weeks on end.

“There’s always Venice,” says Morgana, almost innocently. 

“I don’t think,” says Arthur, and swallows. “I think,” he says, “that I’d rather prefer to stay here. If you don’t mind, Father.”

“Mind?” Uther folds back his newspaper. “Dear boy, I’d be delighted.”

“Thank you, Father,” says Arthur, when he can trust his voice not to shake.

He spends an hour persuading himself not to go to the rose garden. He spends another hour persuading himself to do so. When he enters — dressed with deliberate casualness and still feeling as though he is facing a court martial — it is like entering another world. The roses are a sea of peaches and pinks, and yellows from pale canary to saffron. Trimmed back, they are no longer the tangle of decay that Arthur contemplated the previous summer. They are alive and vibrant and glorious, and Arthur thinks that he can see, in the new spaces along the walls, some of Merlin’s plans for the future. A future that he imagines for himself here.

Arthur takes a deep breath, and walks forward, towards the man in the center of the garden, his former batman, his servant, the man who, from their first meeting, has looked at him as though he knows him, and as though he wants to know him better. “Emerson,” says Arthur. “Merlin.”

Merlin looks up, and smiles, and Arthur wonders if he has been forcing himself, all this time, not to notice how beautiful the other man is. “My lord,” he says easily. Arthur looks away.

“The garden,” he says hoarsely. “It’s glorious.”

“Thank you, my lord.” When Arthur makes no further remark, Merlin adds politely: “The plants are fine ones.” 

Arthur draws a shaking breath, lets it out slowly. “That one,” he says, nodding at the bush Merlin is carefully trimming. Its blooms are deep red, darkening to crimson around their golden centers. “Has that always been there?”

Unexpectedly, Merlin blushes. “No, my lord.”

“And you… decided to move it?” Arthur wonders miserably why this conversation should be so difficult. “Is the, er, soil better here?”

Merlin’s blush deepens. “I brought it with me,” he says, and raises his chin to look Arthur in the eye. “It’s one of my own crosses.”

“I see,” says Arthur. Something in Merlin’s face tells him that he does not see at all. “And what have you named it?” He is rather proud of himself for remembering that roses have names.

Merlin puts down his shears and takes a step closer. Arthur holds his ground. “Lord Arthur,” says Merlin, and stops. Arthur’s brow furrows. He waits for the answer to his question. Merlin laughs, a little wildly; there is something like desperation in his eyes. “I call it the Lord Arthur,” he says.

“Dear God,” says Arthur, and kisses him as though it is a prayer’s conclusion and its answer. Merlin tastes like earth and salt and sunshine, and when Arthur pulls away breathless, he laughs. To Arthur’s astonishment, it is still a boy’s laugh, light and joyous. 

“You certainly took your time about it,” he says, “my lord.”

“Merlin,” manages Arthur. He does not know how Merlin can stand radiant and confident in the center of this garden when he himself has been shaken to his core. “Merlin.”

“Arthur,” says Merlin simply, and raises one hand to cradle the nape of Arthur’s neck. Arthur sighs, and steps closer, and allows himself to lean his forehead against the other man’s, to breathe in his smells of soil and sweat. 

“I didn’t… I didn’t know,” says Arthur. That is at least partly a lie, but he is not sure how to articulate the larger truth. “I didn’t realize.”

“I’m yours,” says Merlin, as if it explains everything. “I’ve always been yours. And I will be yours, until the day I die.”

“Christ,” breathes Arthur reverently. “Do you often just… say things like that, Merlin?”

Merlin pulls back slightly, as if considering the answer to this question. The tip of his tongue steals briefly, distractingly, over his lower lip. Then he smiles. “I suppose you’ll have to find out, my lord.”

Arthur finds himself smiling back. “Yes,” he says, “I suppose I shall.”


	12. July

Arthur says impossible truths over to himself. He does it while doing up his shirtfront in the mornings, or while hacking through the lanes and along the bridle paths, or while standing in the drawing room drinking cocktails with Morgana. He has made their number six, to be believed before breakfast, and believed even in the dead watches of the night. They are:

_Merlin is here, and Merlin is safe._

_I have survived the war._

_We have survived the war._

_I love a man with scarred lungs and bad dreams._

_He returns my love._

_Someday, I will be able to imagine the future._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turned out, in the editing process, that I wanted a little more conclusion to the arc of this fic... and I liked being able to have a full twelve months of Arthur's postwar growth.
> 
> The allusion to "six impossible things before breakfast" invokes _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ , already a children's classic by the Edwardian period.
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting; I've enjoyed getting to explore lady_ragnell's 'verse.


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